Tuesday, July 29, 2014

So while I haven't been a very good blogger lately I have been THINKING about writing... :)

Two weekends ago I welded up the 190D exhaust again, that makes attempt #3. While its a pain I'm getting kind of good at pulling the pipe down, welding up and reinstalling relatively quickly. This time it had about a 3" crack which I covered with a piece of cutoff exhaust pipe I had hanging around the garage. In the past I'd made my repairs from strips of sheet metal but this method is much faster. I took the car to work last Thursday and all was fine, Friday when I tried to take it to work it was worse than before, rats. Saturday I ordered a new pipe and new rear brake pads. Angie has been complaining about the pads squeaking which could be from using Car Quest brand pads. I ordered Pagid which are OE Mercedes and supposedly won't squeak. They're easy enough to change and cheap enough that I'll give it a shot.

Yesterday I got a new lantern in the mail. I haven't ordered anything on eBay in a long time and I'm not sure what prompted me this time but I found what turned out to be a very nice 228C from May 1946 for a really good price:

In the end, with shipping it was less expensive than my 228B and in comparable shape. Now I really need to get to work on my 228D which I've had for maybe 2 years with no movement.

Of course before I get to that I've been DYING to play with an inverted Kamplite I bought at the convention. I paid $40 which I understand is a really good price. This one has a dent just above the globe but it doesn't effect operation at all. I'd tried to light it at the convention but the FA tube appeared to be clogged. These have a very odd FA tube because the fuel pickup sticks into the fount upside down, basically everything is backwards on these.

The pickup has a very small hole in the side covered by a metal screen which you can just barely make out in the picture. When I removed the screen I could shoot brake cleaner through the tube and it would just barely get out the side hole. I soaked the tube in citric acid for 10 minutes, then polished with steel wool and pricked the hole with a 200A pricker rod and now brake cleaner shoots out that hole in a stream.

After reassembly I was a little worried when I didn't get that familiar gurgle but the lantern lit with no hesitation:

Its loud, and when shutting down it pops hard. Like other King Sealy lanterns (Kamplite, Thermos and other AGM derivatives) it doesn't have a burner screen. This one has a few holes in the burner head to act kind of like a screen but its not the same. To prevent the popping from blowing out the mantle I turned the cleaning rod which worked great. Strangely my Thermos lantern doesn't pop on shutdown at all despite not having burner screens.

Anyway next on the list is the Day Lite lantern which is a Petromax clone I also bought at the convention. It ran for awhile but now just flames up. I think it had an iffy gas jet as I can swap in the one from the Wenzel and its better. I'd originally intended to just fix this lantern but then the Wenzel's foot valve failed so I ended up ordering some $50 worth of parts. I'd like to use the Day Lite as a test bed to help me really understand Petromax and then maybe do a rebuild video with the Wenzel.

In other news I recently shot another episode of Lantern Lab which I'm not really happy with. I rushed and it shows, especially in the lighting. I'm going to play with the footage some but I suspect it'll fail to impress me and I'll need to reshoot.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Charlotte, MI. People there will tell you its Char-lotte which differentiates it from Charlotte, NC. Google says tis 770 mi from our house so last Tuesday (a week ago today) we loaded up the old Jetta and headed out. I'm pleased to say ~1500 miles later everything went pretty much perfectly. The car ran well, used about 40 gallons of diesel fuel. We spent a night each way in Niagara Falls, the first night was at the Radisson we spent our honeymoon in which was a treat.

The purpose of the trip was the 2014 Coleman Collectors Club Convention which was a hoot as always. We camped on site, my 413E made the trip as is usual:

Also as usual we camped with Ryan an Tara. A fun thing about camping with them is that we have the same tent, or rather we have the same tent model, they have a 2 person and we have a 4. Thats hilarious because both Ryan and Tara are 6 feet tall. I'm around 6 feet but Angie is significantly less...

Anyway some highlights of the convention include this beautiful hollow wire chandelier:

and a cool branding iron:

I have promised to work on a Colman rising sun brand. I'm thinking about having it printed in plastic on a 3d printer to make a mold to cast in bronze or brass.

There was more including a ride in two different Model A Fords, a horse and buggy ride and ice cream made with an old hit and miss engine. That ice cream was some of the best I've had in my whole life. The guy was making 5 gallons at a time and said he made 7 batches. 35 gallons over 2 days seems like a lot to me but it was that good, nobody had just one dose.

Of course there were a couple big light ups:

Of course I'm right in the middle of everything...

Light ups are interesting, they're a bit like herding cats. The organizers always want to lay out the lanterns in some pattern which requires everybody to pay attention. It seems like people want to just drop their lantern in the first spot they find and get out of the way...